


The Harrowing Adventures of Doctor Sunshine: Volume 1

by wordsandcleverness



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: A Hero/Villain AU no one asked for, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, I curse like a sailor and it shows in my writing, M/M, Nico is a Dork, Superheroes, Villains, Will is Done With This Shit, eventually, med student will, solangelo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2020-12-23 16:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21084506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsandcleverness/pseuds/wordsandcleverness
Summary: Will didn't mean to fall into the superhero business, but now that he's started, he can't stop. Stopping a few petty crimes are all in a day's work. But when a mysterious heist is pulled off at the hospital he works at, it becomes a bit personal. And then he meets the thief himself– a dark and broody, but kind of dorky guy who calls himself the "Ghost King"– and Will knows he's well and truly fucked.





	1. Issue 1:The Guy in the Warehouse

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to my first PJO fic!! So fun fact: I suck at writing one shots. I have only ever successfully written two. All of my other writing exploits, back in the fanfiction net days, were massive, tens of thousands of words long, multi-chapter fics that started as one shots and got out of hand. Much like this one. And it's been a while since I wrote fanfic, so my skills are a bit rusty, and I hope it satisfies. 
> 
> But anyway, I hope you enjoy this first chapter of this dumb dorky thing I wrote!

Will creeps closer to the doorway, peering in through the cracks. An abandoned warehouse, really? Bad guys just couldn’t be any more cliché. It appears to be unoccupied, but recent experience tells him it’s not that simple. He can’t enter through the door anyway, not with it boarded up like so. He scans the area and, sure enough, there’s a busted-out window twenty feet up.

Scaling a shipping container and rolling into a creepy warehouse isn’t exactly how he wanted to spend his Saturday night. But the situation is, admittedly, curious. Just before he’d left the hospital yesterday, he’d overheard two physicians chatting in hushed tones.

“Did you hear the lab got robbed this morning? Someone stole thirty units of blood.”

“How’d they get past security? Think it was an inside job?”

“Don’t know. The security cameras don’t show anyone going in or out, and cameras inside the storeroom went out at the time of the robbery. They’ll be launching a full investigation, though.”

And of course, that had sent Will on a goose chase after any information that would lead him to the thief– who needed to steal blood, anyway? Using some not-quite-legal methods that he wasn’t entirely proud of (thanks, Cecil), he’d spent the last twenty-four hours gathering copies of all the evidence the police had acquired so far and going over it with a fine-tooth comb.

The criminal was thorough, Will had to admit. The police were baffled with the near-complete lack of evidence left behind. Will had been, too, until he watched the security footage for the 284th time– no, he wasn’t counting, shut up– and finally zeroed in on what had been bothering him all along.

Twenty seconds of a storeroom, unoccupied and orderly. Twenty seconds of static. Twenty seconds of the storeroom again, with the door to the blood bank fridge ajar and decidedly less full.

The difference was found on a box of empty vials, stored on the shelf beside the ransacked fridge. It was tiny, not even the size of a fingernail, but a symbol had been burned onto the box near the bottom, so inconspicuous as to be mistaken for a speck of dirt had Will not inspected that box the first 283 times and knew there was no such speck before. He zoomed in on the image and cleared the quality (Cecil really deserved a phenomenal Christmas present for showing Will how to do all this nonsense), revealing the impression of a lotus flower.

A few more hours of digging and several false leads later, he had a name: Lotus Investments, LLC. A shell corporation with no significant assets save for a single address in the Bronx.

Hence the warehouse.

Will rolls in through the open window and lands on a metal catwalk with hardly a sound, mentally applauding himself for retaining his stealth training. He rises to a crouch, moving noiselessly to the stairs and slipping down to the ground floor.

The warehouse is dark save for a single overhead light near the back of the building. Will sticks to the shadows along the walls, watching his steps to avoid tripping on anything that might give him away. Not that anyone is around to hear him if he disturbs something, but nonetheless, he creeps onward.

It's a scene out of a movie, Will thinks, the way the single light flickers ominously, spotlighting the only objects in the whole building: a table, what looks like several boxes sitting on top of it, and a white sheet covering it all. Will checks to make sure he's alone once more, then reaches out to remove the covering.

Before his fingers can make contact, a voice says from behind him, “Can I help you?”

He jumps and turns, tugging on the hood of his cape-cloak-thing that Lou Ellen had given him, making sure his face was appropriately shadowed (“If you're going to keep up the superhero gig, you gotta make sure no one sees your face. It's Superhero 101, Will.”). He comes face to face with a guy dressed similarly to him: an all-black ensemble including a hooded cape and leather combat boots, except where Will has a bow and quiver slung across his back, the other guy wears a sheathed sword at his side. The stranger also wears some kind of ski mask that only covers half of his face, leaving everything above his nose uncovered, and the hood of his cape is pushed back to his shoulders.

The way he came out of nowhere, like he’d melted out of the shadows, makes Will think of Batman, but he doesn’t have the feeling that this guy is the benevolent sort. He’s more like a grim reaper, or something equally as dark.

The new guy tilts his head at Will, arms crossed over his chest nonchalantly, as if Will is a riddle he can't quite solve. “Well?” he asks.

“I... ah...” Will stammers, glancing behind him for a second.

The other guy– damn, there’s got to be some name for him– follows his gaze, humming in recognition. “Well, go on then. Don't let me stop you.” A faint accent wraps around the words.

“What?” Will asks, taken aback. The other guy nods, gesturing to the table in invitation. He slowly turns, watching as Grim Shady– good enough– follows his movements with an affected ease. He takes the corner of the sheet in one hand and flings it off the table, revealing a box stamped with his hospital’s logo and log numbers, as well as several vials filled with colorful liquids he doesn’t recognize. If it weren’t for patching up gory wounds for a near decade and had he not been in medical school, the sight of all those bags of blood in the box might have made him squeamish. As it stands, all it does is make him scrunch his face in mild disgust at Grim’s actions.

“Knew it,” Will mutters, then louder: “You were the one who broke into the hospital.”

“Oh, well done, Sherlock,” says Grim, but his voice has shifted. He is now much higher up than he should have been able to travel in the last several seconds. Will looks up, squinting in the darkness to make out a figure, finally spotting the thief on the very catwalk Will had used while entering the building, a black shadow against the dark walls. “Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘you won’t get away with this, justice will prevail,’ et cetera, et cetera.”

Will blinks and the figure is no longer there. It comes again from his other side, closest to the left wall. He spins to face Grim, finding him walking along the edge of the warehouse with his hands clasped behind his back. “But I’m here to tell you,” Grim continues, “save your breath. I _will _get away with this, there is no such thing as justice in this world, get out of my way.” The last part comes out with a sort of irritated edge, like he’s tired of having this conversation with do-gooders like Will.

Frankly, that tone kind of pisses him off. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

Grim freezes, looking at Will curiously. “You weren’t?”

“Nope. I was actually going to ask what the _fuck_ you were doing in my hospital.”

Silence follows his declaration. He hears a huff of laughter, and this time, it’s like he can feel the moment Grim moves, though he still isn’t sure how he’s doing it. When Grim speaks, his voice comes from high above Will again, but when he looks up, he sees the dark figure perched on a crossbeam, one leg dangling over the edge.

“_Your_ hospital, huh?” Grim repeats, tossing a wadded-up piece of paper between his hands casually. “That’s very confident of you. What does it matter, anyway? Wait, wait, hold on.” A chain rattles, and they are face-to-face again, though Grim is hanging upside down like a dark Spider-Man, staring Will in the eyes. He ducks his head, breaking the contact, but Grim seems to have seen what he wanted. He barks a laugh. “Oh gods, I can’t believe this. You’re that doctor, aren’t you?”

Will groans. Without waiting for an answer, Grim laughs again, as giddy as a kid in a candy shop. “You are! I’ve heard about you– very impressive with the way you saved that kid, by the way. No wonder you’re so concerned about a little blood.” He throws the crumpled paper at Will’s face, and Will catches it with an indignant sputter as it ricochets off his cheekbone.

“A _little– _this is a big deal! Don’t you know there’s a shortage–”

“But if you ask me,” Grim interrupts, “they really did you wrong with that alias. _Doctor Justice_? I mean, come on. Doctor Sunshine was right there! Ooh, can I call you that?”

“Please don’t.”

Grim grabs onto the chain with one hand, righting himself and looking at Will straight on. “I think I will,” he states cheerily, and gods, Will can just hear the shit-eating grin behind the mask.

“Okay, if that’s all, I’ll just be taking this and leaving,” Will grinds out, reaching for the box. He kicks himself mentally for wasting so much time while Grim Shady waxed poetic about his accomplishments and poked fun at Will’s unfortunate alias.

Two gloved hands slam down on the table just as Will’s hands touch the box. He finds himself looking into deep brown, nearly black eyes. Where before they were crinkled at the corners with laughter, now they are narrowed and drawn beneath a furrowed brow.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” Grim warns, and Will doesn’t think he’s ever actually heard someone growl before, but he hears it now. He marvels at how quickly the mood changed. “Listen, Sunshine, you do _not_ want to make me an enemy. If you know what’s good for you, cut your losses and leave.”

Will is frozen. There’s so much he should be doing; he should fight harder, argue more, at least draw an arrow, but he hears the truth in Grim’s words. This is a lot bigger than stopping a bank robbery. Even bigger than diffusing a hostage situation. He fully believes that if he pursues this– at least tonight– he will not live long enough to make the effort count. _Fuck._

“Just who are you anyway?” he asks instead, his face still mere centimeters away from Grim’s. “And what could you possibly need with all this?”

Grim tilts his head again, considering. This time, Will sees the shadows churning, writhing like serpents around Grim.

“If you figure it out, find me,” is all he gets in answer, barely breathed out before the shadows consume his companion.

And then he’s standing alone in an empty warehouse in the Bronx, Grim Shady and his loot having disappeared like they were never there at all.


	2. Issue 2: Origins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every hero has an origin story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Will didn’t mean to fall into the superhero business. It started out as an accident, a one-time thing, and then it was a short-lived joke, which quickly morphed into something far more serious. Now it was a full-time side gig that he would feel guilty about if he quit.

It had been a cold evening in February when the whole mess started. He was walking home from his shift at the hospital, everything except his eyes bundled up against the cold wind; he had never adjusted well to the cold, and today he wore a hoodie, scarf, and a heavy winter coat over his scrubs. It had finally stopped snowing, banks of white shoveled off the sidewalk, but it was sure to start again soon.

He had stopped at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change when he heard the scream. He looked around, but none of the other pedestrians seemed to be in distress or even hear it. Maybe he was hearing things. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and his years of demigod training had him jumpy in the mortal world.

He was just about to write it off as his imagination when he heard the scream again. As calmly as he could, trying not to draw attention to himself and startle the mortals, he turned and strode down the block to where he thought it was coming from, peeking in each alley he passed.

For the third time, the scream rang out, closer and louder than before, sounding like it belonged to a child. Will broke into a jog, mumbling an apology to a businessman he jostled and ignoring the cursing aimed at him. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something between two brownstones, and he skidded to a stop and doubled back.

At the end of the alley was a hulking figure lumbering toward a kid. The boy couldn’t have been older than nine or ten, and he clutched a metal pipe in one hand defensively, trying to ward off the Laistrygonian giant tromping toward him. His other arm hung limply at his side, the wrist twisted oddly.

The boy caught sight of Will and his eyes widened with fear. “Help me!” he cried.

The Laistrygonian giant turned slowly, glaring at Will, who stood dumbfounded for only a moment before lunging toward the kid. The giant’s hands reached for him, but Will rolled between its knees and came up in front of the kid. It appeared to be bulky, slow, and dumb, giving him just enough time to scramble a plan together in his head. He cast his eyes around the alley, finding a fire escape a few feet behind him.

“Go!” he shouted, pushing the boy towards the ladder. He heard the pipe clatter to the ground and sneakers hitting the wet pavement. He snatched up the pipe in his hands, waiting for the giant to realize he had moved, and when it was facing him again, he swung the pipe like a baseball bat.

He struck right between the giant’s ugly eyes. It roared, covering its face with its hands, and Will took the chance to run after the kid. The boy had only made it halfway up the ladder, struggling to hold on properly with his broken wrist. Will hurried after him, giving him a boost up a few rungs.

They were nearly at the top when the ladder shook. The boy shouted, his foot slipping and nailing Will on the forehead. He blinked the stars out of his eyes and heard the giant shout, “Come back, demigod scum!”

All right, so the kid was a half-blood, too, Will noted. “Hurry!” he encouraged, and the ladder shook again. He looked below and saw the giant with its teeth bared in a snarl as it climbed up the ladder.

Will scrambled after the kid, hardly waiting for the boy to throw his leg over the top of the ledge before he was grabbing his collar and hauling him across the roof of the building.

Running across rooftops was not the least bit easy, especially not with an injured child in tow. They only made it to the neighboring building before they were trapped, the next rooftop too far away to reach across a thirty-foot gap. Will’s heart sank. He wasn’t good at this whole battle thing; he could heal scrapes and bruises, close up wounds and set broken bones, but the actual fighting and saving people from immediate danger? He was as useless as a match in a hurricane. And now he had led this kid into another corner they couldn’t escape, surely to get them both eaten by a Laistrygonian any second.

Will ripped his backpack off his shoulders, shoving it into the kid’s arms. “Open that,” he ordered. “There’s a bronze dagger in there you can defend yourself with while I look for another way out.”

The boy didn’t question it and started rifling through the backpack. Will frantically looked over the ledges of the building, looking for another ladder, something to land on, something to hide behind, _anything_. No luck. There was nothing and no one around to help, only a growing crowd of mortals at the base of the building, watching them in concern.

He was just about to tell the kid they needed to scale the sides of the building, already picturing the multiple more broken bones they were both about to get (but at least it beat being eaten by a Laistrygonian giant) when the rooftop they stood on shook with the force of the giant catching up to them.

He turned and went back to the kid. He had found the dagger and held it shakily in his good hand. Will nudged the boy behind him, facing the giant head-on.

The giant stalked towards them, the ground shaking with every step. Its lip curled back, revealing a mouth full of rotten teeth.

“Nowhere to hide, half-bloods,” the giant taunted. It held no weapon, but it ripped up an A/C unit like a weed from the ground and hefted it over its head. The unit stuttered to a halt. Distantly, he heard screaming start on the ground below, but who knew what the mortals saw. Behind Will, the boy whimpered. The dagger shook in his hand.

They were running out of time. Will pushed them both back a couple more feet, but the boy cried in alarm when their feet hit the ledge. The giant was nearly on top of them, and desperate for time, he held up his hands and shouted, “Stop!”

A familiar warmth burst outwards from his hands, coating the darkness in golden light. The giant shouted and dropped the A/C unit, hands moving to cover its eyes from the blinding light. The unit crashed to the rooftop, cracking the concrete where it landed. Thinking quickly, one hand still raised to blind the giant, he closed his hand over the boy’s and took the dagger.

Will prayed to his father for good aim. _Just once, please!_

The giant was beginning to straighten, blinking hard against the light. Before it could fight through its pain, Will found his mark, took aim, and threw the dagger with all his might.

The giant stopped. It looked down and blinked at its chest, where the dagger was firmly embedded only a few inches off from where Will had aimed. It shuddered and dissolved into golden dust, the dagger clattering to the ground.

Will lowered his hands as the light fizzled out. They were steaming and red, beginning to blister in places like a burn. He had never used his healing powers like that before. He hadn’t known he _could _use them like that.

“Dude,” the boy said in awe. “That– was– awesome.”

Will was about to voice his agreement, but then the shouting reached his ears. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that a crowd of forty or so people had formed, all looking up at him and the kid with mixed expressions of fear and admiration. He saw a few phone cameras turned their way. He tugged his scarf up to make sure his face was covered, then put his hand on the kid’s shoulder and went back the way they came.

By the time they navigated all the streets, avoiding crowds and looking back for any monsters that might be following them, and made it back to Will’s apartment, it was surely past a reasonable hour. It was definitely past stupid o’clock by the time Will got the kid– Ryan, a half-blood son of Hephaestus, he learned– patched up and escorted him to Camp Half-Blood. And it was _most certainly_ nearing the ass-crack of dawn by the time he finally made it home to find Cecil– roommate, best friend, pain in Will’s neck– sitting at their kitchen counter, barely home from second shift at a fancy hotel, hair stuck up in all directions.

Cecil looked at Will horrified, like he had walked in saying that Ares kids were outside their door looking for him. “Dude, what the _hell_?”

“What?” Will asked.

Cecil produced his phone and turned it so that Will could see the headline glaring up at him: _SUPERHERO AMONG MEN: Doctor Justice saves child from kidnapper, vanishes._

Below the headline was a video on loop, and there was Will– green scrubs, coat, scarf and all, and just a glimpse of his blonde hair peeking out from under his hood– in the moment he blinded the giant with his healing magic, though the mortals surely couldn’t know that. Even the Mist couldn’t cover up what had happened. Will took the phone and scrolled quickly through the article, reading as some people theorized that he had to have been holding a flashlight of some kind, and others commented that no flashlight was seen, and a small one wouldn’t have shone so brightly, thus leading them to conclude that the hero of the night was an otherworldly being come to save the earth.

“I, uh…” he said.

His phone buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed again, so many texts arriving all at once so that he had to dive to catch it when it fell off the counter.

_Kayla_: (Link: YouTube) isn’t this near your hospital?? IS THIS YOU???

_Austin_: bro what did you do

_Lou Ellen_: you got some ‘splainin’ to do. call me!!

And they didn’t stop.

Will looked up to Cecil, and they shared an overwhelmed gaze.

“What,” Cecil said flatly, “the fuck.”


	3. Issue 3: Two Guys Walk into a Museum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will meets his rival for the second time. You could say that things don't go "well."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and happy belated Halloween! I almost walked out of my house without posting this chapter on my way to a Halloween party, but I caught myself just in time lol. Please enjoy!

Will is used to taking on extra responsibilities. He was one of the best healers the Apollo cabin had seen in years when he was at Camp Half-Blood, and by the time he was twelve, he was second-in-command in the camp infirmary, second only to his brother Lee (and Chiron, of course). When Lee died in the Battle of the Labyrinth, the mantle fell to Will, if only because he had the most natural healing talent of all his siblings. And it was okay, because Michael was there to lead their siblings in everything else and encourage Will along the way.

In the following year, Will lost four older siblings. Two didn’t return to camp; Alexis was attacked by a pack of telkhines on her way home from school one afternoon and didn’t survive, and Jordan just went missing. Two more siblings died in the Battle of Manhattan: Michael, who went down on the Williamsburg Bridge, never to be seen again; and McKenzie, who took the blunt end of a spear to the abdomen, swore she was fine, and then died of internal bleeding by morning.

So, just shy of his fourteenth birthday, Will also became head counselor of the Apollo cabin. It wasn’t because he was the oldest– he had one remaining older brother who barely had a year on him– but because he had the most experience at camp, having been a year-rounder since he was ten as opposed to Anthony’s single summer. With an infirmary full of wounded campers and a whole cabin of grieving younger siblings, Will silently took up the new responsibilities.

Much like he takes on the additional responsibility of finding and apprehending this new villain who has seen fit to torment him.

Will spends most of the next day researching the guy he met in the warehouse and he finally finds a lead on Reddit. The comments on r/RealLifeVillains start with conspiracy theories, wild guesses at who committed which crime. Most of them are farfetched, but a few of them match the criteria of the guy he just met– some standard bank robberies, a couple art gallery heists, and then some other strange petty theft cases with one common thread: no one is ever seen entering or leaving the scene of the crime, and no security camera seems to be functioning at the very moment the theft is carried out.

That alone isn’t quite enough to convince Will, but two lucky (though likely just clear-sighted) mortals had each witnessed an escape. The first was following a bank robbery, when the culprit nearly knocked down a college girl as he made his escape from a high window. He reportedly righted the girl with an apology, and she swears that he then stepped into a shadow and disappeared.

The second is reported by a high school student, who writes that he had been walking back to the bleachers at a football game following halftime, when he saw a dark figure lurking behind the bleachers. The kid says that he almost didn’t stop– plenty of people hid behind the bleachers for one reason or another and it really wasn’t any of his business– but he looked again and saw that there was a skeleton as well. A real human skeleton, standing upright without any visible assistance underneath the bleachers, and the cloaked guy was talking to it as casually as one would speak of the weather.

The boy, understandably, freaked out. He asked, “What is that? Who are you?”

Next, the boy writes that the figure turned and stared at him coldly. He almost ran away, to find someone or to just get the hell out of dodge, but then the man spoke.

“I am the Ghost King.”

The boy states that the shadows curled around the Ghost King, and he disappeared. The skeleton collapsed and sank into the dirt with hardly a scar to mark the disturbance.

Will doesn’t believe in coincidences. The gods have meddled in too many lives for there to be any such thing as chance, and he knows now that the thief he met in the warehouse, Grim Shady, was really the self-proclaimed Ghost King, melodramatic and powerful. Sure, he doesn’t know anything about skeletons bending to the Ghost King’s will, but the rest adds up.

(Man, “the Ghost King” is infinitely cooler than “Doctor Justice,” and it’s _so_ not fair.)

His eyes fall back down to the crumpled newspaper page on the table– the one the Ghost King had thrown at his face and which Will had held onto dumbly. He smooths out the creases and reads the headline again.

_Greek and Roman artifacts to be displayed at Natural History Museum._

The article says that the exhibit is set to open only a few days from now, on the coming Thursday. An idea begins to form in his head. It’s easy– too easy for a crafty guy like the Ghost King– but it’s the only plan he’s got.

After getting some pointers from Cecil on pickpocketing and minor theft (which Will hates every second of), he finds himself in the basement of the American Museum of Natural History, wearing a newly <strike>stolen</strike> borrowed guard uniform and fumbling with a security pass as he slides it down the reader. There’s a beep and the door unlocks for him as he ducks through. He keeps his head down for good measure, even though he’s sure Lou Ellen’s glamour charm will hold up– they’ve tested it multiple times ever since she gave him the enchanted leather bracelet following his first encounter with the Ghost King, and it worked… well, like a charm.

Museums, Will discovers, are downright creepy at night and not at all entertaining like _Night at the Museum_ would have one believe. Most of the lights are out, and the darkness makes the shadows look all the more intimidating. He swears the mammoth skeleton is glaring at him. He doesn’t really know what he’s looking for, aside from signs pointing to the new exhibit. Is there a particular relic that he should retrieve before the Ghost King does? Or does he just walk around the exhibit and wait for his rival– foe? enemy? Are they at the nemesis-level yet?– to show up so he can apprehend him?

He falters. What if the Ghost King doesn’t even show up? What if there was no special significance to that stupid newspaper and it was sheer chance? But the Ghost King doesn’t strike Will as someone who does anything arbitrarily, and the fact that the exhibit is surrounding Greek and Roman history– something Will is very much acquainted with, not by any choice of his own but by his birthright– is too coincidental.

He presses forward, circling the atrium until he comes to the staircase. He heads up to the second floor and finds the sign for the exhibit, but as he draws near, he hears whistling and footsteps approaching from behind him. He ducks into a darkened exhibit, where the security lights illuminate an Easter Island moai. He half expects it to come to life and call him Dum-Dum.

He holds his breath as the footsteps come ever closer, slowing but not stopping outside the exhibit he’s hiding in. He waits for a beat, two, three, and then steps to move forward into the Greek and Roman exhibit. The whistling picks back up, and Will’s mind supplies the word to the familiar tune as easy as breathing.

_You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…_

He freezes. No way. No _fucking_ way.

He slips back into the hallway and follows in the direction of the whistling, pausing inside the doorway and looking at the figure hunched over a glass case, running a gloved hand along the edges as if looking for a weak point. Instead of the black ensemble he wore last time they met, the Ghost King is now wearing a guard uniform identical to Will’s, but he gets the feeling that it wasn’t acquired as innocently as Will might would like.

He hears a soft click from across the room and sees the man reach inside the case, but he pauses without removing anything, as though he senses that something is off.

“Are you stalking me, Sunshine?” the Ghost King teases.

Will gives up on stealth and enters the room fully. “You’re the one who left me a clue leading straight to you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The Ghost King turns, and Will sees something gold glinting before it disappears inside his pocket. The other man looks at Will’s uniform and then back to his own. “Well, one of us is going to have to change,” he quips.

Will isn’t sure– he can’t focus properly on his rival’s face and he thinks the Mist may be at work; every time he thinks he’s focused on an eye or a nose, his eyes drift away and he forgets what he’s just seen– but the Ghost King might be smirking. He rolls his eyes, reaching for his bow and an arrow. “Look, I don’t know what game you keep playing, but I don’t have time to stand around talking to you.”

The Ghost King shrugs. “Yeah, sure. You’ve got a life and better things to do than fight with little old me.”

Will glowers at him, nocking an arrow. “I really don’t want to fight you. But I will if that’s what it takes to stop you.”

“Sure. But make it quick,” the Ghost King muses, checking his watch. “If this place has any decent security system, a silent alarm should have been triggered by now, and that would give us maybe three more minutes before the cops arrive.”

It feels like a trap, a stupid thing to do. But Will pulls back his bowstring and lets the arrow fly. He blinks and in the next moment, the Ghost King is holding a wicked-looking black sword and deflecting the shot.

Will gapes. “How did you–”

“I’ve faced a lot worse than you, doc,” says the Ghost King with a small scoff. The comment stings a little– sure, he’s not the best son of Apollo, archery-wise, but he’s an okay shot. His talents lie more in healing. “Look, I’ll save you the trouble– you’re not getting anything from me. I need it way more than a stuffy museum does.”

Will strides closer, within reaching distance of the Ghost King. “But what for? First it’s a bunch of donated blood, and now it’s–” he checks the plaque in front of the now-empty spot on the display. “–a necklace from ancient Ithaca? Just what kind of creepy ritual are you performing anyway?”

The Ghost King seems to tense up but relaxes just as quickly. Before he can retort, the sound of wailing sirens draws close and flashing blue lights illuminate the room, casting eerie shadows all around.

“That’s my cue,” he says, taking a step towards the dark corners of the room.

Will acts on instinct, drawing the knife at his belt and lunging towards the thief. The Ghost King deflects the blow with his sword, and the impact seems to rattle Will’s arm all the way up to his shoulder, He isn’t given the chance to strike again; the Ghost King has the clear advantage of a much longer weapon, and while a blade would never be Will’s preferred deadly accessory, it certainly is the Ghost King’s.

He’s not sure why he even tried to use force, Will muses as he finds himself disarmed, arms pinned behind his back and a sword at his neck. The blade doesn’t touch his skin, but he can feel the icy chill rolling off of it in waves. He tries to move farther away from it, but he doesn’t have much room to move with his wrists clenched in an iron grip.

“Stop moving,” the Ghost King hisses as Will tries to break free again. He pauses as a puff of warmth washed over his left ear, where his rival leans close. “I’m not going to hurt you, but this isn’t going to go well for you if you don’t _stop squirming._”

“‘Won’t go well?’ What–”

“Try not to throw up on me.”

An odd command, Will thinks just as he hears pounding footfalls approaching from the hallway, police shouting at them to put their hands up–

And then the world is twisting around him, the darkness pressing in on him from all sides and all he feels is _cold cold cold. _The shadows seem to whisper at him, snatches of conversation drifting through his consciousness, though he won’t remember a word later. He stumbles along as something– someone– the Ghost King, he registers– holds onto him, feeling like he’s being dragged drunk through a wind tunnel.

The wind stops and he falls on all fours into a patch of grass. The world tilts sideways. He tries to remember to breathe deeply as he fights back the nausea turning his stomach.

“Why did–” He gags. “What was that?”

“Shadow-travel,” the Ghost King answers above him. “Couldn’t have you ratting me out to the police, now could I?”

Hands grip his shoulders and pull him upright, propping him against a tree. Will’s vision clears and he sees the Ghost King crouching in front of him, but the Mist still obscures his features. Behind him, Will sees dimly lit lampposts and a pond, like they’re in one of the city’s many parks.

“I’m impressed,” the Ghost King comments. “You handled that better than most would.”

If Will feels this sick and disoriented, he doesn’t want to know how other people would handle the experience.

The Ghost King stands and brushes the dirt off his palms. “Well, I’d better get going,” he says casually, as if they’re just two acquaintances who bumped into each other on the street. “Places to be, crimes to commit… you get it. See you around, Sunshine.”

“Wait–” Will reaches out, but the shadows converge on the Ghost King again, and he’s alone once more.

He groans as he moves to get off the ground, and his fingers curl over cool metal. He grasps at it and brings it closer to his face, squinting in the darkness at the gold pendant in his hand. His thumb runs over the impression of a woman’s face, probably a goddess–

It clicks.

The Ghost King must have dropped it when he picked Will up off the ground, a careless and sloppy move. Everything about the night puts an uneasy feeling in his stomach, but he stuffs it in his pocket and staggers out of the park, already calling Cecil for help as he hails a cab home.


	4. Issue 4: Equal Grounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unintentional meeting with the Ghost King seems to level the playing field, but Will isn't quite sure what to make of his rival anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Many apologies for the late update; last week kicked my ASS. But here is the next chapter! Thanks for reading!

"It's been far too long, my dudes,” Lou Ellen declares, throwing an arm over Will’s shoulder as they enter the bar.

“We did this last week,” Cecil reminds her.

“Like I said, it’s been far too long. And it has _especially_ been too long since I got to pick the bar.”

Will does have to admit that he already likes this place more than Cecil’s last pick, which was a dark and seedy place that he had wanted to leave as soon as they arrived. He hadn’t been able to enjoy himself, constantly looking around for danger and keeping a hand over his drink. Lou Ellen hadn’t felt much better; Cecil was the only one who seemed to like it.

“Hey, my place had charm!” Cecil argues.

Lou Ellen scoffs. “Yeah, if the constant fear of getting mugged or trapped in a bar fight is your idea of charming. It was sketchy as all hell.”

“And more importantly, it got shut down for health code violations,” Will supplies, rushing to claim three seats at the bar as they are vacated. Lou takes the stool next to him, with Cecil on her other side.

Cecil wipes away a fake tear. “May they rest in peace, those beautiful bastards.”

Will and Lou share a look just as the bartender comes to stop in front of them. Will looks up and catches his breath. The bartender is perhaps the most beautiful man he has ever seen, wearing a fitted black t-shirt over narrow shoulders. He has a full mouth pulled downwards in a frown, and Will thinks that he might like to make him smile. From underneath inky black bangs, the bartender meets his eyes and raises one eyebrow.

Lou Ellen digs her elbow into his side, flashing her license at the bartender. “ID, Will.”

He fumbles for his wallet, and he curses the way his hands shake just a little bit as he hands his license over to the bartender. The man looks at it just a moment longer than he had looked at Lou and Cecil’s. Will isn’t really paying attention as Lou Ellen orders their first round, watching as the bartender turns away to make their drinks.

“Geez, Will, try to at least be subtle about your fantasizing,” Cecil snarks, waggling his eyebrows.

Will flushes. “I wasn’t–”

“Oh, please, I’ve been your friend long enough to know when you want to get into someone’s pants.”

He feels heat flooding his entire face, all the way down to his neck. “Dude! Say it a little louder, will you?”

Fortunately, the bartender doesn’t seem to hear as he sets down three tumblers in front of them. Or if he does hear, his poker face is impeccable.

Lou Ellen raises her glass and knocks back her whiskey with hardly a shift in expression, Cecil and Will following suit. He grimaces as he feels the burn all the way down his chest, but he’s just a little bit smug when he hears Cecil choking on it and complaining that “booze shouldn’t hurt like this.” Serves him right.

“So,” Lou starts, gesturing for three more shots. “Any word out of the _Ghost King_?” She says the name with a teasing lilt, making sure he remembers how ridiculous the whole situation is (as if he could forget).

Will glances around the bar, but between the music and the patrons slowly getting louder as the alcohol flows, he doesn’t think anyone is paying them any attention. Still, he’d rather keep his repeated altercations with a known supervillain on the down-low, thanks. “Seriously, you both need to learn how to keep it down. And no, I haven’t heard from him since he _literally_ dumped me on the ground.”

Cecil leaned in and lowered his voice. “He didn’t leave a clue this time?”

Will falls silent for a moment as their empty glasses are replaced with new ones. He rolls the amber liquid around the glass as he waits for the bartender to go out of earshot, pretending like he doesn’t sneak a glimpse at those tight jeans. “Nope. All he said was ‘See you around, Sunshine.’ And then he disappeared. Again.”

Lou Ellen’s lips quirk upwards in a badly suppressed smile. “Sunshine? Cute.”

He glares at her. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Oh, some guy with a cape and enough dramatic flair to make Mr. D jealous can call you Sunshine, but not me? Your best friend of ten years?”

“I thought I was your best friend.” Cecil pouts, but Lou puts her hand over his mouth.

“I love you both equally, and no, Lou,” Will says and then throws back his shot. The burn is a little easier this time, but still not quite pleasant. “I don’t _let_ him call me that, but I don’t have any blackmail on him to get him to stop. I do, however, have blackmail on you.”

“Yeah? Name one embarrassing thing you’ve got on me.”

“The Fourth of July incident of 2012.”

Lou pales and Cecil barks a laugh. “Dude, I forgot about that! Remember when you and Connor–”

“Shut. Up. Cecil.” Lou Ellen looks like she wants to melt into the floor. She takes her shot, and then Cecil’s (who relents with poorly guarded relief) and is already gesturing for another before the glass even hits the countertop. Will makes a mental note to order water with their next round and keep a close eye on Lou, before she gets them all too drunk to walk home.

“_Anyway_,” Cecil says, brushing off Lou Ellen’s admonition. “Maybe he’ll send you another clue when he’s up to no good. Or like a reverse Bat Signal– you know, instead of calling for help it’s because he’s the one committing the crime and–”

“Yeah, I got it,” Will cuts him off. He leans in close and lowers his voice to a mutter. “It’s just that I don’t understand why he keeps leaving me clues in the first place. First the symbol at the hospital, then the newspaper– they’re too calculated to be mistakes. It’s like he _wants_ to be found out.”

“Maybe he just wants someone to give his evil monologue to,” Cecil offers.

Lou Ellen nods sagely. “The Dr. Doofenshmirtz to your Perry the Platypus.”

His mouth quirks up in a smile. “Well, he hasn’t given me a long-winded monologue about his tragic backstory yet, so not quite.” He lowers his voice again. “There’s also that necklace he dropped–”

“He did _what?!_” Lou says too loudly. He and Cecil shush her as several nearby patrons glare at them. The bartender gives them a strange look as he clears away their glasses, and Will’s stomach does a funny flip. He blames it on too much alcohol and not enough food.

They fall quiet until their new drinks in front of them– lighter this time, and Lou Ellen grudgingly sips at the water Will forced into her hand instead of her beer– and Cecil speaks up.

“I took care of it,” he explains to Lou Ellen. “Put it in an envelope and snuck it into their incoming mail the next morning.”

“That seems to be against your whole prerogative.”

“What, you think Hermes kids are only good for stealing and not putting things back? Please, I have some integrity.”

They fall into another round of bickering, and Will can only think about how lucky he is to have those two backing him up. Without Lou Ellen’s magic, he surely would have been found out by now, and Cecil’s knack for all things involving thievery is the only thing keeping Will’s ass out of jail, especially after he came home with a stolen artifact in his pocket, panicking because his fingerprints were surely all over it and _how would he return it without getting caught?_

“Anyway,” Lou Ellen drawls, bringing Will’s focus back to his friends. “If he didn’t leave you a clue this time, maybe it’s his turn to find you.” She looks at him with a suggestive smirk.

He rolls his eyes and shoves her shoulder. She dramatically falls into Cecil’s side. “Yeah, whatever.”

“No, I’m serious!” Lou Ellen insists, raising her voice to be heard over a rowdy group behind them. “You know how demi– uh, _people like us_– are. We have ways to find each other, and he seems like the type to be especially good at it.”

“You’re sure this guy is like us?” Cecil asks.

“There’s no way he can’t be,” she says. “Will, you said he disappears into the shadows, right? What mortal could do that?”

Will nods in assent. “He talks like us, too– you know, saying ‘gods’ and not ‘God.’ And he carries a sword. He’s a half-blood, for sure.”

“So now the question is who his immortal parent is,” Cecil replies, nodding to himself. “And from there maybe we can figure out what his deal is. Lou, does any of this shadowy stuff sound like your mom’s territory?”

She frowns. “Maybe. She has some control over darkness and shadows, but I’ve never heard of any of my siblings _using_ the shadows like that.”

As his friends begin to debate back and forth over who the Ghost King draws his powers from, Will looks across the room at the bartender, who is standing with arms crossed at the other end of the bar, jaw clenched as an older man in a suit speaks lowly. The bartender’s mouth barely moves as he responds, and something in the other man’s expression darkens, clearly not liking what he hears.

The bartender’s gaze shifts and locks onto Will. For a moment, his stony expression wavers, something akin to fear flickering across his face, but it’s gone as soon as it appears. Will drops his gaze to the countertop and squashes down the squirming feeling in his stomach.

///

The next evening, he walks into a darkened apartment. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, since Cecil is usually gone for his shift at the hotel by the time Will gets home, but nothing happens when he flips the switch, and, well. That is definitely not normal.

He sighs and drops his bag in the entryway, going to the breaker box on the wall next to the kitchen entry. He opens the panel door, but before he can figure out what the problem is, a voice rings out and he nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Ah, ah, ah,” says a familiar accented voice, sweet as honey. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

“Oh, gods.” A thousand scenarios run through his head all at once, each one more horrible than the last, and he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to calm his rapidly beating heart. “What did you do? Did you rig it or something? Is the whole block going to blow up if I touch a switch? Or–”

“What? What the hell?” The Ghost King’s voice is incredulous now, offended even. “No, why would I– I just need darkness for secrecy and dramatic effect! Gods of _Olympus._” His voice lowers, and Will strains to hear him mutter, “What would your fans think if they knew Doctor Sunshine was really Doctor Doom-and-Gloom.”

He starts to relax, and his fingers twitch towards the breaker box, wondering if he could switch on the lights and throw the Ghost King off his guard. But would that even work? Or would he bolt once he didn’t have the darkness to cover him and provide an easy escape if things went south?

Will decides against it and takes the last couple steps into the kitchen. There, sitting on his countertop, barely illuminated by the window on the other side of the apartment, sits the Ghost King, eating raw cookie dough straight out of the tube with a spoon.

There are a lot of things wrong with the picture, beginning with the fact that his fucking rival is in his home in the first place, and not quite ending with the fact that his _ass_ is on the counter, like some kind of heathen.

“Are you serious?” Will says, putting his hands on his hips and leveling a stern glare at the Ghost King. What he can see of him, anyway. “What, being a villain means you don’t have manners? Get off the counter!”

Gods, he sounds like his mother.

He swears he can _hear_ the eye roll. “Jeez, fine.” A heavy thump follows the statement as two booted feet hit the ground. “Can’t believe _that’s_ what you’re fixated on.”

“Oh, I’m pissed off about the rest of it, too,” Will assures, crossing his arms and leaning against the opposite wall. From this angle, the other man is a mere silhouette. “Care to explain how you found my address?”

The Ghost King digs the spoon into the cookie dough. “I have my ways, William Solace,” he says, muffled.

Will flinches. It shouldn’t shock him that his identity is revealed, not when there’s the much bigger problem of his rival knowing where he lives, but still. It feels a little bit like a failure, like he’s broken the cardinal rule of superhero-ism by being found out.

_Maybe it’s his turn to find you,_ Lou Ellen’s smartass comment comes back to him.

He hates when she’s right.

“Are you here for a reason, or are you just going to stand there and eat my food?” Will snarks.

“I had to scope out enemy territory, duh,” the Ghost King answers. “Nice place you’ve got here. Cozy. We need to talk about your freezer, though.”

Will frowns, caught off guard. “My freezer?”

“Yeah. Do you even eat real food?” The Ghost King’s voice takes on a scolding tone.

He feels like he’s eight years old again, being chastised by his mom for eating junk food before dinnertime. “Says the guy eating raw cookie dough,” he deflects.

The Ghost King waves his spoon in a wild gesture. “This, sir, is a delicacy. _That–_” he points to the closed freezer. “–is an abomination. I’ve never seen so many frozen chicken nuggets in my life!”

“Chicken nuggets are real food!”

“They’re shaped like dinosaurs, Solace. I don’t think that counts.”

Will grunts. “I’m in med school. Give me a break; I don’t exactly have the time or money to cook decent meals all the time.”

“And that’s the other thing!” the Ghost King cries. “Imagine: me, going through hospital databases. You, Doctor Justice, not really a doctor, but a _med student_? I feel a little betrayed.”

“First off, the media gave me that name. I have a little more taste than that. And second–” Will starts to panic a little as the full implications of the Ghost King’s words hit him. “You broke into hospital databases? Holy shit, that’s _so_ illegal.”

“As you put it, I’m a villain,” the other man deadpans. “Do you think I care?”

“You seem not to care about much. Like, oh, that necklace you stole from the museum, for example. Thanks for dropping that, by the way.”

“It won’t happen again; don’t worry your pretty little head over it, Sunshine.”

Will breezes past the comment, boxing it away in his mind to ponder later. “What I don’t understand is why.”

“Why what?”

“Why you keep letting me find you. Why you stalked me here. Why you just dropped an artifact you went to the trouble to get in the first place.”

The list could go on with a million _why’_s and _how’_s, but Will refrains from asking them.

The Ghost King pauses. “Maybe I’m just not that thorough of a villain.”

Will scoffs. “I have a hard time believing that. Your clues, your hacking, knowing exactly how to get my attention– it’s all too meticulous.”

The spoon clatters into the metal sink and the Ghost King’s silhouette moves to the doorway, within reaching distance of Will. He starts to reach out to hold him back, get some answers out of him, but he stops himself.

“Look,” the Ghost King says in a lower tone, far more serious than their banter from before. “Are you busy Thursday night?”

Will reels back. That certainly wasn’t what he was expecting. “I– what?”

“Thursday night. You have plans?”

What is he even supposed to say? Is this going to become a regular thing? Is the Ghost King trying to be his… his friend? Something else?

“Ah… no?” he answers. “I mean, I have class until four, but–”

“Good.” The Ghost King backs away. “Stay home. Tell your friends, if you want. But _do not_ leave this apartment Thursday night.”

“Why–”

“This one is bigger than either of us. You have no reason to trust me, but just once, do what I say and don’t interfere. There’s nothing I can do to help if you do.”

The words leave him with far more questions than answers, but before he can ask them, the Ghost King has slipped into the shadows and disappeared.

///

He almost ignores the Ghost King’s warning. He almost puts on his superhero gear, almost goes out searching for trouble to stop. But a feeling in his gut tells him that there was some validity to the warning. He makes sure his friends stay home, too, and he turns on the news channel to play in the background while he studies.

By midnight, he feels sick with guilt as the news reports the casualties in a nearby apartment fire, seemingly caused by a gas explosion. Will knows better, though. He knows that this is connected to what the Ghost King told him, and that it is no accident. He also knows that had he not stayed home, he probably would have been in the area of the explosion, might have even tried to stop what was happening if he saw the Ghost King.

But even though he feels like he could have– _should_ have– done more, he also knows that he probably wouldn’t have lived had he interfered. For some reason, the Ghost King had made sure Will stayed safe. And what the hell does that mean about his rival? That he has a moral compass? A sense of decency?

_Bigger than either of us._

_Don’t interfere._

_Nothing I can do to help…_

The persisting questions haunt him long into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Unfortunately the next update will be late as well. I will be in New York this week to see the Lightning Thief musical on Broadway (!!!!!!) and will not be bringing a computer to write on. So I will try to make it up with a longer chapter next time!
> 
> Edit: (12/4/19) So sorry, I've been meaning to add in this edit but it's going to be a while longer on the next chapter. I have been fighting with my Word docs not loading correctly, if at all, and I don't have a back-up of my most recent stuff saved. So I'm probably going to have to rewrite my chapter, and with the holidays, it's been crazy busy. I'll try to update as soon as I can.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Leave a comment if you liked it!
> 
> Updates will (hopefully) be on Fridays, and I already have the next couple chapters written out. Let's see if I can stick to a posting schedule. *fingers crossed*


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